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Friday, April 29, 2016

The Indiana Primary and ObamaCare

As the Indiana Republican primary approaches
next Tuesday, I am reminded ofthen-governor.Mitch Daniel’s, 2010 remarks on the state of the union and
ObamaCare.Daniels is now president of
Purdue University.

“We’ve been through a global recession. Now
we’re fighting through a stalled recovery. Revenues are the lowest they’ve been
in half a century. Their finances a wreck, many states have effectively sunk
into bankruptcy.

Indiana is still afloat. In fact, we’ve fared better than most. We continue to
meet our obligations without raising taxes, and the reserves we carefully built
and protected will get us through the downturn.

But as if we did not already have enough on our plates, the passage and
implementation of Obamacare presents us with a whole new set of challenges and
a costly to-do list.

I note with special sadness that first and foremost amongst the bill’s
consequences will be the probable demise of the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP).
This program is currently providing health insurance to 50,000 low-income
Hoosiers. With its Health Savings Account-style personal accounts and numerous
incentives for healthy lifestyle choices, it has been enormously popular and
successful.

Cost of “Reform” to Indiana

Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, soon to cover one in every four citizens,
will not only scoop up most of HIP’s participants, but will also cost the state
between $3.1 and $3.9 billion over the next decade.

Of course, it’s a misnomer to even refer to this as “reform.” It doesn’t reform
anything. Instead, it perpetuates and magnifies all the worst aspects of our
current system: fee for service reimbursement, “free” to the purchaser
consumption, and an irrationally expensive medical liability tort system. It’s
a sure recipe for yet more over-consumption and overspending.

Since my election, my state coworkers have had the choice of Health Savings
Accounts in lieu of traditional health care plans. The first year this option
was made available, some 4 percent of us signed up for it. Six years later,
more than 70 percent of our 30,000 state workers have opted for the personal
account.

This trend has had a startlingly positive effect on costs for both employees
and the state. State employees enrolled in the consumer-driven plan saved more
than $8 million in 2010 compared to their coworkers in the old-fashioned
preferred provider organization (PPO) alternative. Indiana will save at least
$20 million in 2010 because of our high HSA enrollment.

It has also been the source of significant changes in behavior, as state
workers with the HSA visit emergency rooms less frequently and are more likely
to use generic drugs than co-workers with traditional health care. Hoosiers
enrolled in HIP have experienced similar changes in behavior with generic drugs
now accounting for 84 percent of all prescriptions used by enrollees.

This is a sharp contrast to the prevalent model of health plans in this country
that encourage individuals to buy health care on someone else’s credit card.
What seems free will always be over-consumed, compared to the choices a normal
consumer would make. Hence our plan’s immense savings.

The condescension of the ‘reformers’ is misplaced. It turns out that typical
Americans are neither too dense nor too intimidated to make sound decisions
about their own health. This is, of course, a fact that national policy makers
sadly ignored during their overhaul of our health are system. Now the rest of
us are left to pick up the pieces.”

The Health Reform Maze

Buy the Book

Book Description: In this first book in a series of four, Richard L. Reece, MD. provides a unique view of the roll out, and run up, of the Affordable Care Act. Reece shows in this book the progress and facets of ObamaCare's marketers and messengers, as the day approached for the launch of health insurance exchanges - the single most public and problematic portion of the new law. This is a must read for anyone who wants to chronicle this attempt to organize more than one-sixth of the U.S. economy by adding layers of federal government control and regulations.

Reece has been writing about U.S. health care for more than 45 years. His knowledge and experience, added to his keen intellect and gift of subtle humor, make this book a valuable part of anyone's collection.